Clinton Signs Education Bill at Noontime Rally for Kennedy

By Susan PageNewsdayFRAMINGHAM, Mass.

The noontime rally at Nevins Municipal Hall Thursday looked like a sort
of joint rescue effort, with battered President Clinton and beleaguered
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy offering praise for each other's achievements, scorn
for their critics and predictions that their political fortunes were about
to turn.

"Until the last few days, this had the earmarks of an unusual election
where people were in danger of voting against what they're for and for what
they were against because of the inordinate success of our opponents in
talking things to death and confusing things," Clinton declared to the
hoots and cheers of a partisan crowd that chanted, "Six more years!"

Kennedy, a liberal lion and 32-year Senate veteran, got good news
Thursday with publication of a Boston Herald/WCVB-TV poll that showed him
building a 10-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney.

Clinton, too, seemed bouyed by the enthusiastic receptions he received
during a two-day swing to New York and Massachusetts after weeks of being
avoided by some Democratic candidates in states where his popularity has
sagged. And he brought more than rhetoric to the Bay State: He signed a $60
billion, five-year education bill that Kennedy had been instrumental in
getting enacted into law.

In a speech held in the John F. Kennedy Gymnasium at Framingham High
School, Clinton declared that the measure had passed Congress "in a
bipartisan fashion for all the children of this country." A half-dozen
Democratic members of Congress and a single Republican - Sen. Jim Jeffords
of Vermont - watched as the president sat at a scarred school desk and
signed the new law.

For his part, Romney discounted the idea that Clinton's appearance would
make much difference. "Most Democratic candidates in the country are
cutting the president's coattails into parachutes and getting as far away
as they can," he said.

But Clinton's new combativeness reflected some feeling in the White
House that Democratic prospects were looking a little brighter in the Nov.
8 midterm elections. Some aides say a string of foreign policy successes -
the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti, the nuclear
agreement with North Korea and the pullback of Iraqi troops from the
Kuwaiti border - had helped bolster his standing.

A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll published Thursday showed the
president's approval-disapproval rating at 48 percent to 43 percent, a
turnaround from the 44 percent to 48 percent rating he had received just a
month earlier.

Clinton's aides also said the president was determined to try to make
his case on domestic policy to a skeptical public.

"Twenty-one months ago, you sent me to Washington to try to change this
country," Clinton told the political rally, listing as his accomplishments
efforts to cut the deficit, create jobs and fight crime. "I come here to
tell you that we've still got a long way to go, but America's in better
shape than it was 20 months ago."

Kennedy agreed. "When we re-elect old Kennedy to the Senate," he told
the crowd, "we're going to start on 1996 to elect Bill Clinton."